


Lost Things (Always Come Back in the End)

by Brachylagus_fandom



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Post-Deathly Hallows, Statute of Secrecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 18:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13863210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: After a witch goes missing, Martha Owens and Josiah Fawley must scramble to find her personal effects.





	Lost Things (Always Come Back in the End)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mechanonymouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/gifts).



For Martha Owens, November 10 began as a perfectly average Tuesday. The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes was mostly empty - there were still Death Eaters in hiding, after all, and someone (or several someones) kept cursing muggle suitcases to vanish and reappear in airports halfway around the world - but she, as the senior (currently only) Muggle Liaison, was stuck at her desk writing reports on muggle phenomena and recommendations no one would read, let alone follow. She had just written a short explanation of CCTV (or, as Auror Wroxton had put it, "TCVT") cameras for the Auror Department and was working through the many, many ways the Wizengamot's latest draft of the new Muggle Interaction Guidelines were… _misguided_ , to say the least (particularly where the Muggle police were concerned) when a plane from the Department of Magical Transportation landed on her desk.

Another muggle had just found a Portkey. Great. Owens glanced up to see which, if any, Obliviators were around; most were off on jobs, but Josiah Fawley was still at his desk, filling out a suspiciously thick stack of Necessary Obliviation forms. (She'd wondered who had tried to spin the dementor incident in London as swamp gas; she supposed she knew now.)

"Obliviator Fawley, we're needed on Level Six," Owens said. Fawley groaned.

"How many does that make this month?" Fawley asked.

"Five incidents and twenty-seven people, assuming this one came alone," Owens said as they walked towards the lifts. "If it makes you feel better, it's probably too early for it to be another field trip."

"Senior Liaison Owens, Obliviator Fawley." Beatrix Maddox, Head of the Portkey Office, was waiting for them when they arrived at the Department of Magical Transportation. That was odd; she normally sent one of the younger employees who'd been forced to skip their last year of Hogwarts or flee instead of coming herself. "Thank you for coming so quickly; it's been a rather… trying morning."

"How many was it this time?" Fawley, grimacing at the thought of another field trip, asked.

"Oh, just the one, but there are some… complications," Maddox said.

"Such as?" Owens asked.

"Well, it wasn't quite a normal Portkey, you see. We've been trying out this new system for magical visas, mostly for short trips and high-level people - I make a personal possession of theirs a Portkey set to return here when they're scheduled to leave so that their international Portkeys don't get delayed - the forms for that are quite a nuisance-"

"And one of these has turned up with the wrong person?" Owens asked.

"Exactly. This," Maddox held up the necklace she'd been fiddling with, "belongs to Gayle Ortiz, researcher of medicinal potions at the Salem Witches' Institute. She was scheduled to leave yesterday night, but a muggle man appeared with her portkey about ten minutes ago. He's in Interview Room Three."

"Has he been given anything?" Owens asked.

"He was pretty agitated, so Aquilina wanted to mix some Calming Drought into his tea, but after what happened last time…" Owens nodded; this wouldn't have been the first time some well-meaning witch or wizard learned the hard way that muggles do not metabolize most potions correctly.

"Good. Fawley, are you ready?" Fawley nodded, and Owens pushed open the door to Interview Room Three. The man already sitting there shifted uncomfortably as they walked in. "Thank you for waiting so patiently, Mr.-"

"O'Neil," the man said. "Thomas O'Neil. Where am I? What happened?"

"Where did you find this necklace, Mr. O'Neil?" Owens asked.

"The necklace? I got it at Eddy's this morning."

"Edward Caxton's pawnshop?" That would at least put this case back into familiar territory; it seemed like every stolen magical item ended up at that pawnshop sooner or later.

"Yeah. His register broke again, and it's my job to fix it." O'Neil shrugged. "My little girl's birthday is coming up, and I thought it would be a nice present since it's got her initials and everything. What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing," Fawley said. _"Obliviate."_ O'Neil's eyes went glassy. "Caxton's cash register took longer than expected to fix, which is why you were delayed. Nothing in the store caught your eye." O'Neil nodded. "Do you want to apparate him back, or should I?"

"You do it," Owens said. "I need to send out a Missing Persons report and find out what magical items Ortiz brought with her." Fawley nodded and apparated away.

***

Edward Caxton's pawnshop was located on a street so close to the end of Knockturn Alley that it was practically inside it. It was also utterly still at ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning, so no one but Fawley and a cat that looked suspiciously like a runaway Kneazle noticed when Martha Owens appeared in a nearby alley, her robes transformed into a neat black suit and a suitcase in one hand.

"O'Neil drove off a few minutes ago," Fawley said by way of greeting. "Took one look at his watch and jumped into his truck to get to his next appointment. I haven't seen someone bounce back that quickly from an Obliviation since that fellow at the Quidditch World Cup. Did you get a list of what we need to find?"

"Yes, and it's fairly short," Owens said. "The only potentially Statute-breaking items she brought with her were her wand, her notes, four vials of unknown - probably experimental - potion, an adult dose of Pepper-Up Potion, a Never-Lost briefcase with expansion charm on the inside that should show up at the Ministry shortly, a jacket with warming and anti-weather charms, and the necklace."

"That's… not that bad," Fawley said. "Only the wand and the unknown potions are really dangerous." Owens looked at him. "What?"

"You've never seen what happens when a muggle takes Pepper-Up Potion, have you?" Owens asked.

"No. Have you?"

"My little brother got a terrible ear and sinus infection when I was a second year. I thought it would help. My potions book said it was harmless, practically impossible to overdose on. And it is, for wizards."

"But not for muggles?"

"Exactly." John had turned out fine in the end, and the Pepper-Up seemed to have made the antibiotics work a bit faster, but Martha and her parents had been thoroughly dissuaded from ever trying that again. "Do you want to question Caxton while I look for the items?"

"Sure." As they entered the pawnshop, Owens cast a discreet _Magicum revelio_ while Fawley made a beeline for the counter. Items along the shop's dimly lit shelves started glowing an eerie blue-green. As Caxton and Fawley talked louder and louder, she quietly slipped among the shelves, collecting the items her spell had marked as magical. Neither of the men noticed.

***

"Well, that was a waste," Fawley, rubbing his recently broken (and unbroken) nose, said.

"We found some stolen goods," Owens said. "I don't think any of them belong to Ortiz, but I found a lot of -OW!" Owens yelped as one of the pieces of jewelry she'd found, a handsome gold brooch inlaid with obsidian, stung her. "Nasty protective enchantments on that one. What are you looking at?"

"That's the the Black family brooch," Fawley said as he stared at her hand.

"How do you know?" Fawley raised his eyebrows. "Nevermind." Fawley was a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, a pureblood so pure he was able to learn of purges ahead of time and warn almost a hundred muggleborns before he'd had to flee himself.  _Of course_ he knew what the Black family brooch looked like. "Where do we go now?" A loud _boom_ jolted both her and Fawley, and a sparkly pink cloud of smoke rose a few blocks away.

"That way," the two said in unison, and they started to run towards the scene of the chaos.

Fifteen minutes, six Obliviations, and one pamphlet from the newly formed Muggleborn Education Commission titled _Accidental Magic and You_ later, Fawley and Owens had the wand. (It was Ortiz's wand, thankfully; Owens wasn't sure what they would have done if someone else had left their wand lying around in the middle of a muggle neighborhood. Maddox's patronus, a rather jumpy-looking hare, had come to say that the suitcase had appeared at the Ministry with the notebook and one of the potion vials, disguised as a bottle of perfume, inside. That left the other four vials of potion, the contents of only one of which they knew, as immediate threats to the Statute of Secrecy and muggle safety.

They had no idea where any of those four vials were, or what whoever had them thought they were. Without any other trail to chase, they headed back to the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, which was slowly starting to panic about the missing items.

"If we assume that the vials were seized," _and Ortiz was killed,_ Owens very carefully didn't stay - she might just be unconscious or in a muggle A &E ward and avoiding contacting the Ministry even if all signs pointed to her being dead, "near where the wand was found, then whoever took them is probably in that area, too. We need to set up alerts for potential potion exposure at the nearest A&E units." Owens tapped the map of London behind her, and the relevant hospitals flashed gold. "Once they arrive with suspicious symptoms, they'll need to be assessed and potentially taken to St. Mungo's for treatment; muggle treatment will almost certainly not be effective."

"What symptoms are we going to consider suspicious?" One of the interns asked as he wrote out her request.

"Well, Ortiz was working on nerve tonics, so probably confusion, agitation, maybe some hallucinations, and almost definitely a lot of pain for the unidentified potions. For the Pepper-Up, severe hyperthermia, fast or irregular heart rate, hyperactivity, a flushed complexion, and headache." The intern nodded.

"Will the muggles be alright?" someone else asked asked. "I mean, once they've received treatment." Owens sighed.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what the unidentified potions were or their concentration or how muggles will react to them. I don't know who will ingest them or how. I don't even know if the vials are still intact or if we're worrying for nothing - or have far more than four exposures to worry about. Hopefully, these potions will go through the muggles' systems relatively quickly and any damage done will be reversible." With that, Owens went to review (and possibly revise) the interactions guidelines for muggle medical staff; pretty soon, someone was going to need it.


End file.
